Retail Bank Interest Rate Pass-Through: New Evidence at the Euro Area Level

Abstract

This paper presents an error-correction model of the interest rate pass-through process based on a marginal cost pricing framework including switching and asymmetric information costs. Estimation results for the euro area suggest that the proportion of the pass-through of changes in market interest rates to bank deposit and lending rates within one month is at its highest around 50%. The interest rate pass-through is higher in the long term and notably for bank lending rates close to 100%. Moreover, a cointegration relation exists between retail bank and comparable market interest rates. Robustness checks, consisting of impulse responses based on VAR models and results for a sub-sample starting in January 1999, show qualitatively similar findings. However, the sub-sample results are supportive of a quicker pass-through process since the introduction of the euro.

Keywords: Retail bank interest rates, market interest rates, euro area

JEL Classification: E43, G21